Another epic weekend was had on the skis.

Saturday, an attack on Night Mare was made from my friend Mark’s cabin on Hart Prairie Road.

The snowmobile picked us up at 7:30 and J-money and I got our warm-up at about 20 mph behind a snowmobile for 4 miles into the cabin.

By the numbers the day was 8.31 miles, 5500 feet of ascent, 5:17 moving 1:25 stopped, with an average of 1.6 mph and a max of 22.9 mph. You can check out the google earth overlay here, or take a look at the profile of the day.

The powder was present in bulk quantities. The first run yielded 1500 feet of luscious tree skiing, and so we took the only real option available: a second run.

After a sweet second run, we wrapped around the bottom and skiied all the way back to the skin tracks and then down to the cabin.

After a few beers and some soup, Mark gave us a tow back down to the cars. I guess he figured we were all warmed up at that point (don’t know if it was from the skiing or the couple beers), because when he hit the main forest road, he decided to let ‘er rip. We made it to the parking lot in record time where he informed us that the snomo speedometer was reading somewhere around 50-60kph for most of the final road stretch.

For you non-metric folks, that means we were doing somewhere around 30-35mph down a forest road being towed behind a snowmobile. Awesome.

Sunday morning I woke up at 7, fully intending to go to sedona. After a quick check out the window (snowing), and a check of the weather online (snowing in sedona, too), I instead headed back under my down comforter and slept for another hour or so. After a nice big breakfast, Jeremy called me at around 10:00 and informed me that the 6-8 inches we had in town had already translated to 12-14 up at snowbowl, and if there was ever a day to buy a lift ticket, this was it. His roommate Eric (who teaches lessons at snowbowl) told him there was a significant abundance of powder, and a significant lack of people. That sealed the deal (not that we needed it).

We showed up at the ticket window at 11:58am, donned skis, and were on the lift at 12:02 for a half day. There was no lift line and the snow was pouring forth from the heavens. I stuck with Jeremy and Tiffany for the first couple runs, and then decided that there are no friends on a powder day. Especially one with no lift lines.

(Empty Chairs at Snowbowl on a Sunday?! MADNESS!)

I got to the bottom of my third run, waited for about 15 seconds (well. . . maybe more like 10) to see if they were there, and assumed they had already got on the lift.

I got in 11 runs that afternoon, and at 1,900 feet apiece, I broke the 20,000 vertical foot mark in a little over 4 hours. Every single run was through trees with 1-2 feet of fluffy powder at their feet, just waiting for me to tear them apart.

And tear I did.

It was an incredible weekend, and I think my legs are more sore today than they were after the APC. They were so sore that I even took an ice bath last night to help my legs get back to normal. They are still sore today, but after an easy spin tomorrow morning and some deep stretching, I should be back at it for another good training day on wednesday.